


A Debt to be Paid

by mariana_oconnor



Series: Tumblr fic [10]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Bounty Hunter Clint Barton, Deaf Clint Barton, Flashbacks, Harold Barton's A+ Parenting, Hufflepuff Bucky Barnes, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Ravenclaw Clint Barton, mandatory funday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2021-02-22 23:54:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23002420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariana_oconnor/pseuds/mariana_oconnor
Summary: Clint Barton, washed up former Quidditch star turned bounty hunter. He never knows who his clients are until he meets them, and sometimes not even then. Honestly, he'd tell this guy to go to hell if it weren't for who he's being asked to find.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Series: Tumblr fic [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/952233
Comments: 18
Kudos: 152
Collections: Mandatory Fun Day





	A Debt to be Paid

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [mandatoryfunday](https://mandatoryfunday.tumblr.com/) over on tumblr for the prompt Hogwarts AU. I even mostly sort of managed to stick to the prompt. Well… I mean, it’s a Harry Potter fusion fic, and there are some scenes set in Hogwarts.
> 
> This is unbetaed, there are time jumps. I think I caught all the tense shifts, but I might not have done. It’s a hot mess. Read at your own peril. Also, I’m not intending to add anything to this right now, even though I agree, it’s not the whole story.

Knockturn Alley is the place you go when you’re desperate. Not because it’s full of dark magic and evil - although to be fair, there are a few places that match that description. It’s because the people there don’t ask questions. The guy walking past could be a werewolf or a Ministry official. You don’t know and you don’t want to know. It’s a place where people respect your privacy, if only because they’ve got enough troubles of their own to deal with.

Clint feels right at home, or at least that’s what he tells himself. He never really made much of himself at Hogwarts. Quidditch and the ability to aim a hex were the only things he really had going for him, and Quidditch… didn’t work out.

So he’s here, meeting with another client in another backroom, wand up his sleeve for easy access, just in case things go sideways.

Things go sideways about a third of the time. Well, two thirds if you count minor injuries.

He doesn’t know their name, doesn’t know what they want yet. Maybe he won’t even take the job. Sometimes he doesn’t.

He steps into the building and old Philbert the doorkeeper tips his hat. Clint nods back and stamps the worst of the dirt off his feet.

“Room eleven,” Philbert says, handing over a heavy brass key. Clint takes it and slips a couple of sickles back, giving a nod before he strides further in.

The house is designed to be confusing, the corridors twist and turn, staircases appear and disappear, and it’s never the same any time you come back. There are no doors in the walls, that’s how it works. The only door you see is the door you are sent to. It’s easier that way. If Philbert doesn’t tell you, you could spend your life wandering the halls and never get out.

Clint tries not to think about it too much. One of the downsides of being half-muggle is that you have a tendency to apply logic a bit too much. It’s better just not to think about things like that.

Room eleven finds him, as the room always does, and he slips the key into the lock, hearing it turn with a firm clunk.

His wand is halfway into his hand as he steps in and peers into the dark. The curtains are drawn and the only light is from a couple of candles on the mantelpiece. Two high-backed armchairs are arranged in front of it, facing towards a large painting of a hunt, a pack of hounds runs between the trees as Clint glances at it.

“Mr Barton.” A man stands up from the chair nearest the window. He’s tall, dark skin, an eyepatch over one eye and dressed in long black robes scattered with runic patterns that look powerful. It takes a lot of effort not to jump. Clint hadn’t noticed him sitting there, and has the distinct impression that you don’t notice this guy, not until he wants you to.

“That’s me,” Clint agrees, grinning amiably and giving a little wave. Rumour has it Clint got struck on the head by a bludger a few more times than is strictly good for you. Rumour has it right, sort of, and Clint’s got no problem playing down to people’s expectations.

“Mr Barton,” the stranger says. “Your reputation precedes you.” He sounds more amused than impressed and Clint’s atrophied sense of self-preservation takes a second to wonder what exactly he just walked into.

“Good to know,” he replies. That seems innocuous enough a statement. He doesn’t exactly want to give anything away.

“Indeed,” the man says. HIs face isn't giving anything away, perhaps it's the dim light, or perhaps he's just that good. Whatever the reason, Clint can't get a read on him, which is enough of a sign in itself, he supposes. “You can sit down.” The stranger waves at the other chair.

Clint eyes it suspiciously. Experience has taught him at least a dozen ways in which furniture can kill him. He was almost eaten by a grandfather clock in Truro, and that was when he was on holiday. While he weighs up the pros and cons of the seat, the man just watches him with an unimpressed but expectant look.

“I prefer to stand,” Clint says, finally deciding. It’s not worth the risk.

“Suit yourself,” the stranger says, sitting back down himself and picking up a glass of firewhiskey from the table besides him. “I suppose you won’t have a drink, either? Pity. This is the good stuff.” He smacks his lips together and makes an exaggerated noise of approval. Because he’s fucking with Clint, of course he is.

Clint wouldn’t know the good stuff from the bad stuff. Back when he’d still been a professional quidditch player and he had briefly had the money for such luxuries, he’d been more interested in parties than the quality of the booze. The guy just sits there sipping, completely unconcerned by Clint’s presence.

He tries again to get a read on the guy. Usually he can tell pretty early on whether he’s going to take on a client, but this guy is a closed book.

Clint's job is actually pretty simple on paper. He finds people. Of course, that's just on paper, things are a lot more complicated in real life. He finds the sort of people who are hard to find - people who are lost either deliberately or by accident. The magical world is a dangerous place and the Ministry of Magic is generally rather lackadaisical about such things. The last client he’d had had gone to the Ministry first and been told: ‘either she’ll come back or she won’t come back. We think it could probably go either way. Who can tell? Certainly not us.’ and then the Ministry spokesperson had shuffled back into their office.

So Clint looks for them because the Ministry doesn’t give a fuck, and half the time no one else does either.

Of course, you get the people who don’t want to be found and they fall into two categories: the better off lost and the deadbeats, who are also better off lost, but if they could pay out the money they owe before they vanish again, that would be great.

The first lot, Clint doesn’t find. He refuses the jobs. No way he’s dragging someone back into an abusive situation. Kid, wife, husband or lover, if they’re better off gone he’ll give them a few galleons to tide them over and sadly admit defeat. The second lot? They’re his bread and butter.

This guy, though. This guy doesn’t seem like his request is going to fall into either of those camps. He’s too self-assured. For him, this is a business transaction, and that in itself is worrying.

“Do you have a name?” Clint asks. “Or should I just call you mysterious stranger?”

“You can call me Fury; everyone does.”

Clint can feel his brain freeze. That’s a name he’s heard before. Merlin’s balls. Ministry bullshit. That’s what he’s walked into.

It’s not well known, but Clint’s got contacts - he knows a witch who knows a witch - and he’s heard the name Fury before. Current head of the Department of Mysteries. The most unspeakable Unspeakable of them all.

Clint racks his brain, trying desperately to work out if he’s done something recently to piss off the Ministry.

To be honest, there’s so much politics and backstabbing going on in there that it could be anything. And even if it isn’t, there are at least three members of the Burke family in prominent positions and they’re not likely to be his greatest fans, not after their dear Belladonna decided to destroy him.

Clint hates the ridiculous pureblood politics. They’re the only reason he’s doing this in the first place. If Belladonna hadn’t framed him for cheating and thrown the considerable bulk of her pureblood connections and fortune at it, then he’d still be head chaser for the Appleby Arrows.

Whatever the Ministry wants, though, it can’t be good.

“So, Mr Fury-”

“Just Fury.”

“-Fury. What can I do for you?” Clint asks.

“Like I said, your reputation precedes you,” Fury says. “You were the best Chaser the Arrows ever had. 99% on target, record goal scorer every season you played, even though you also had record injuries. I saw a few of your matches. You flew like you were more comfortable in the air than with your feet on solid ground.”

Clint was - he is - but there isn’t exactly a lot of opportunity for flying these days. The rise of the smartphone has meant the rise of anti-exposure laws.

“You want me to play quidditch?” Clint asks. “In case you aren’t paying attention, I’m not exactly welcome in those circles any more.”

“I’m aware,” Fury says. He looks at the painting on the wall, where the dogs are still running from tree to tree. “Jealousy’s a horrible thing and Ms Burke is a very dedicated young woman. Although, the Arrows have been falling down the league table.”

“Yeah, well. These things happen,” Clint says, shrugging. He doesn’t pay attention to the league any more, it just makes him tired. “What’s this got to do with anything? Or do you want my autograph? I’m flattered, but I didn’t bring a quill.”

“No need, Mr Barton,” Fury says. “I just wanted to make it clear that we’ve had our eye on you for a very long time.”

“Because that’s not creepy at all,” Clint half whispers.

“Mr Barton, at the Department of Mysteries, we like to say that we invented creepy,” Fury said, his voice far milder than that sentence deserves. “That’s not true. Creepy was invented by the Mesopotamians. What we did… is we perfected it.” He smiles. It’s not a nice smile. It’s not a friendly smile. It’s the sort of smile that says ‘I know where you sleep at night and how long it takes you to get to sleep and it’s probably going to be a whole lot longer tonight.’

“I can see that,” Clint agrees. “So if you’ve finished threatening me, maybe we can get to the part where you tell me what you want me to do and I tell you to lose my floo address.”

“Oh, you’re going to take this job, Mr Barton.”

“Because otherwise you’ll hex me until my brain bleeds out my nose?” Clint asks.

“That would be unethical of me,” Fury says. “And also against several Wizarding Laws. The Department of Mysteries frowns on unnecessary hexes, Mr Barton. We believe that there is always a better option.” Clint notes that the man does not say how the other option is better, or what it’s better at doing. It’s the things that people don’t say that you really have to pay attention to in his experience.

“Right… so what is this job you’re so sure I’ll take.”

“You know, of course, about the British Magical Preservation group?” Fury asks. Clint shivers at the thought.

“Yeah, I know.” Who doesn’t? They’ve been making waves, talking shit that sounds reasonable, sounds good. Greater protection from muggle incursions, more careful registration procedures to make sure that dangerous witches and wizards can’t get into the country, greater separation between the Ministry of Magic and the worrying policies of the Muggle government, opening a second magical school in the UK to avoid the systems that have caused so many problems in the past.

Except it’s all bullshit, and the school would be for muggleborns and the restrictions they’ve suggested, when you look at the fine print, mean weeding out those whose ‘backgrounds show less magical ability. And Clint always reads the fine print. Well, he does these days. Probably should have read that contract for the Arrows a bit better. 

The BMP group? They’re Death Eaters. Pureblood supremacists putting on the nice masks and their Sunday best robes and saying ‘look at us, we’re wholesome and good, of course we don’t believe in the extermination of an entire group of people’.

“Ah,” Fury says. “That look right there. That’s why we approached you, Mr Barton. You’re not taken in by things that seem pretty on the outside.”

“Best way to give something away is to stick a bow on it and call it a gift,” Clint says. “Don’t mean it’s not a bomb.”

“Quite… well, their sugar and spice routine isn’t their only number,” Fury says. “We have reason to believe they’ve been involved in several ‘accidents’ that have occurred in the last few years. Nothing provable. Nothing obvious. Just… accidents. That happen predominantly to muggles or muggle-born individuals. A train was derailed on the muggle railway. A bridge collapsed. A muggle-born witch found her broomstick braking charm… stopped working.”

Clint grits his teeth and nods.

“We have suspected for some time now, that all these incidents were the work of one specific individual.” Fury tells him, reaching into his robes to pull out his wand. Clint stiffens, because he knows that is reputation is down the toilet, but he didn’t think he’d be suspected of murder. “Not you, Barton,” Fury says with an eye-roll. “Let’s call him ‘Winter’. Two months ago, one of our agents got close enough to find out who this wizard is. The last communication we got from them was that they’d discovered the assassin’s identity and that they had a plan.”

“Well that doesn’t sound worrying at all,” Clint says. “You want me to find your agent, then?”

“No,” Fury says. “Agent Nomad was found at the doors of St Mungos one week ago. He hasn’t woken up yet.”

“O-kay… then what do you need me for?” Clint asks. “Sounds like everyone who needs to be found has been found. Great! Although maybe tell Agent Nomad to be more careful next time.”

“We’ve also received word that ‘Winter’ has disappeared,” Fury says. “Our sources say no one in the BMP group knows where he went. And none of our resources are able to track him.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Clint asks. “You want me to find some shadowy assassin-mage who’s using concealment magic so strong that even the Department of Mysteries - where you literally have all the magic - doesn’t know where he is?”

“Simple put? Yes.”

“I don’t even know what this guy looks like. Your sources might be wrong. What am I even supposed to track?”

“Agent Nomad had one item concealed on his person when he was found. A roll of film. We developed the pictures.”

Fury waves his wand and an envelope appears in the air in front of Clint. He grabs his wand instinctively. There’s a moment and Fury’s eyebrows rise up his head, his eyes widening in an expression Clint is very familiar with. It very clearly asks if Clint is kidding.

“Open it,” Fury finally says and Clint snaps into movement, using his wand rather than his hands. Who knows how many nasty curses the Department of Mysteries has at their disposal?

Three pictures slip out of the envelope and come to hover in front of him. They all show a man, roughly Clint’s age, long hair, stripped to the waste, his body showing the curiously shaped scars of powerful curses running across his skin, his left arm silvery, but moving as naturally as the rest of him as the image straightens. All around him are witches and wizards, poking at him with wands.

The man doesn’t move much, barely at all. If it weren’t for the people moving around him, Clint might think he was looking at a muggle photo. 

He opens his mouth, about to ask, when the man’s eyes flicker towards him and his breath catches in his throat, because he knows this man.

“We believe that is the BMP group’s assassin,” Fury says.

“That’s Bucky fucking Barnes,” Clint responds, his mouth falling open.

“Yes. It is.”

*

Clint first met Bucky Barnes on the Hogwarts Express. He’d been thirteen years old, scraggly and scrawny like an underwatered houseplant struggling towards the light, and filled with the sickening dread he always got in his stomach at the start of the year. The thought that maybe when he came back for Christmas, his Mum might not even be there anymore. Without him or Barney to protect her, Clint was sure things got worse.

But he had to go to Hogwarts so he could learn how to protect her.

The train lurched into movement before he’d found his friends, almost sending him off balance and straight into the side of a boy walking the other way Clint found his eyes swimming in a sea of yellow and black and he’d pulled away to find that his face had landed in the neck of a Hufflepuff boy walking past, his arm draped around the neck of a boy even skinnier and scragglier than Clint himself, Gryffindor red and gold about his neck.

“Sorry,” Clint had muttered, pulling himself to the other side of the passageway. The guy had just grinned at him.

“No harm done. Just watch where you’re going, kid, you look a bit unsteady on your feet.” He’d grinned, broad and wide, and Clint’s eyes had gone huge at the sight of it. He’d never seen anything quite that beautiful.

“Quit it, Buck, you’re scaring him,” the Gryffindor kid had said.

“I’m not scared,” Clint had snapped. They had just grinned at him.

“What are you, first year?” ‘Buck’ had asked.

“Third!” Clint protested. He hadn’t changed into his uniform yet. His dad had been drunk again, passed out on the sofa, so it was Mum who’d had to bring him and Barney to King’s Cross, and that meant going the muggle way.

“Yeah, you’re Barton, right?” the Gryffindor said. “You were Chaser on the Ravenclaw team last year. Scored that incredible goal from the other end of the pitch.”

Clint puffed up.

“I remember that,” Buck said. “Good shot. Pity your seeker wasn’t up to much.”

“You should try for the team this year, Bucky,” his friend said. “You know you’d be better than what Hufflepuff’s got right now.”

Clint took advantage of their distraction to slip away, dragging his case behind him. But the image of Bucky’s smile had stuck in his head.

*

“You’re telling me that Bucky Barnes joined the BMP?” Clint asks, incredulously.

“We don’t know,” Fury says. “After Hogwarts, he went on to become an Auror. Pretty damn good at it, too. Was declared MIA about five years ago, right around the time you were being tipped to play for England.”

That explains why Clint hadn’t heard about it, then.

“You think he ran away to join the bad guys?”

“Maybe. Maybe they took him. The Imperius Curse is a nasty little spell, Mr Barton.”

Clint laughs at the idea that anyone would have the strength of will to use Imperio on Bucky Barnes. The man was one of the stubbornest sons of bitches Clint had ever met, and his first instinct in every situation had always been to protect, not harm. But the alternative is that the Bucky he knew at Hogwarts, his first real teenage crush, was gone and there was nothing left but a murderer in his place.

“I heard you once found a man protected by a Fidelius charm,” Fury says.

That’s technically true. But the thing people need to remember about the Fidelius Charm is that all you really need to do is find the Secret Keeper. It’s really not as amazing as all that. Just look at the Potters.

“I’ve found a lot of people,” Clint says.

“Yes. The Maximoffs speak highly of you.”

Clint starts. That’s not a name he was expecting to hear.

“I didn’t find the Maximoffs,” he says carefully. “I returned the money.”

“I know,” Fury says. “I imagine that’s why they speak highly of you.”

“Can we get to the point?” Clint asks. He doesn’t want to talk about the Maximoffs. He’d hoped they were long gone, but now apparently they’re talking to the Ministry. They were officially one of his most costly failures. Unofficially, they were one of his greatest successes, mainly because he didn’t strangle Pietro where he stood.

Fury’s face loses all impression of levity and it’s deadly serious as he looks into Clint’s eyes.

“The point is that we’re not the only people looking for Barnes, Mr Barton,” Fury says. “The BMP group is very interested in his whereabouts and they’ve sent their best retrieval teams after him.” 

“And you’re planning to send me,” Clint says, a little incredulous. He already knows Fury’s won. Clint’s going to take the job. Fury knows he will. Clint wonders exactly how far back Fury’s interest in him goes, because there’s no way the average person would realise that Clint Barton knows James Barnes. Sure, they were at Hogwarts together, but Bucky wasn't even in the same house. Even fewer people know that Clint would be willing to do pretty much anything to save him. He owes him a debt.

He looks down at the picture in his hand again, and the picture looks back. Bucky Barnes does not look evil in the brief few seconds of time the photo had captured. He also doesn’t look good. He looks like someone who’s been pushed right past his limit and been told to keep standing.

“What will you do with him if I find him?” Clint asks.

“What we deem to be appropriate,” Fury says ad Clint just nods. That’s about what he was expecting. Some of the people he’s looked for, the ones he couldn’t find, vanished into the Department of Mysteries and were never seen again. From what he’s heard, it’s not a happy place.

He owes Bucky Barnes better than that.

*

Bucky fucking Barnes. Best damn Beater in the school. Wasted in Hufflepuff because they were fielding a terrible team, but they didn’t need a decent team if Barnes wiped their opponents off the map.

It was the aim that made him lethal. Clint had the rare gift of being able to get the quaffle through the hoop from ninety foot away every single time. Bucky had the ability to make bludgers fucking dance.

He could aim a bludger with pinpoint accuracy. It shouldn’t be possible, everyone knew that bludgers had a mind of their own, they were made that way. But somehow Bucky could make one fly right in front of your face, so close it almost brushed your nose. Unless you’d done something to piss him off. Then it would be a whole lot closer.

Clint must have done something to piss him off, because he was currently in the hospital trying to sleep off the after effects of a bludger to the brain, and the world kept getting yanked out from underneath him. Mostly, he was just lying staring at the ceiling and wishing the world would stop moving so he could actually get some sleep. It was half two in the morning. Even the portraits on the walls were sleeping… well, to be honest, Clint wasn’t sure that some of them had ever woken up.

There was a creak from the door and Clint turned his head, regretting the act immediately as everything lurched horribly and nausea rose in his throat.

Scott, he thought, probably, sneaking in after hours to give him contraband chocolate frogs that Clint wouldn’t be able to eat because just the thought of food was making him hate everything.

But as the figure sneaked across the stone floor of the hospital wing, Clint could make out their shape. It wasn’t Scott. For a start Scott’s hair stuck up, it didn’t fall perfectly over his forehead. Second, Scott didn’t wear Hufflepuff colours.

“Barnes,” Clint said. “Seriously?” He groaned and slowly moved his head so he was back staring at the ceiling, wondering if he was hallucinating.

The other problem with Bucky fucking Barnes was that he was too fucking pretty and maybe sometimes Clint got distracted during quidditch matches against Hufflepuff because he ended up staring at the guy. Not that he’d ever admit that.

“Barton,” Bucky’s voice hissed. “Shit… you look like someone hit you with a colour charm. You’re purple.”

“No colour charm, just a bludger,” Clint replied. There was a silence.

“Yeah… I… I’m sorry. I thought… you put on a burst of speed and I didn’t think… It was supposed to go in front of you, I swear. I didn’t want it to.” There was the sound of a shuddering breath and Clint wanted to turn to look, to see what Barnes’ face looked like, but he didn’t want to feel sick again, so he just lay there.

“I thought you were dead,” Barnes said. “I thought… you just dropped and I thought I’d killed you.”

“You wish,” Clint said.

“Are you okay?” Bucky asked.

“Head hurts like a bitch,” Clint told him, risking a glance to the side. His head swam, but he could see Bucky’s face, genuinely concerned. “I’m fine. It’s quidditch; sometimes you take a bludger to the face. They managed to set my face, so at least it won’t damage my good looks.”

“Good,” Bucky said, more seriously than Clint’s silly joke required. “Because next time no one’s going to be able to say the only reason we beat Ravenclaw was because you weren’t on the pitch. You hear me?”

“If I’m on the pitch, Barnes, Hufflepuff doesn’t have a chance,” Clint said. He grinned weakly and Bucky grinned back, but he still looked a little worried. “Seriously, Barnes, don’t worry about it. I’ve had way worse.”

For some reason that made Bucky’s mouth tilt into a deep frown, his brow furrowing.

Before Bucky could speak, however, there were footsteps, the sharp click clack of Madame Pomfrey heading their way. They looked at each other for a second before Barnes half ran across the hospital wing and slipped out the door, just in time.

*

“Do I get to know anything about what he’s capable of?” Clint asks. “Or are you planning on sending me out there blind?” Bucky had been a year ahead of him at Hogwarts, but he’d heard Bucky had scored the highest in the year on his Charms OWL, and he’d always been good at countercurses in a fight and - with Steve Rogers as his best friend - he’d got into a lot of fights.

“Assume he’s capable of anything,” Fury says. “He’s practically a ghost.”

“Great,” Clint says. “And, more importantly, how much is this worth?” He’d almost forgotten about payment. Fury raises an eyebrow.

“Fifty galleons now,” he says, producing a clinking pouch out of seemingly nowhere. “A hundred more if you deliver him.”

“Expenses?”

“I think fifty galleons should cover it,” Fury tells him. His tone is flat and the slant of his eyebrow dares Clint to suggest otherwise.

“Good point,” Clint agrees, knowing when to cut his losses is a valuable life skill that it had honestly taken him long enough to learn. “Any idea where to start?”

“If I had information like that, do you honestly think I’d be here asking you?”

“Another excellent point,” Clint says, grinning. He reaches out to grab the pouch. “Looks like we’ve got a deal. I’ll find Bucky Barnes.”

But not for you, Clint thinks, looking Fury right in his eye. I’ll find Bucky Barnes because he deserves better.

*

The roof of the Astronomy tower was the highest roof in the castle, and it was one of Clint’s favourite places. No one else came out there. It took a decent climb up a vertical stone wall and then over the gargoyle infested edge before he’d made it anywhere stable. But once he was up there… you could see for miles on a clear day and today was as clear as could be. So clear that the air around him seemed energised with it.

But Clint wasn’t up there for the view, not today. He had a bottle of firewhiskey in his hand and his arm in a sling.

It was the second night of the school year. Ravenclaw tower was full of excited people catching up with what their friends did on holiday, talking excitedly about what magic they had learnt, greeting the new first years and settling in.

It had been a roar of noise and all Clint had been able to hear was a lopsided, unintelligible mess.

He’d been hoping, somehow, that going back to Hogwarts would be some kind of cure-all. He’d hoped that maybe Madame Pomfrey might have an answer, but he’d got to the door of the hospital wing and he hadn’t been able to knock.

What would he even have said? Hi, I spent my summer being knocked around by my Dad and now I don’t hear so good. Can you fix me?

Barney wanted him to leave. He was working at the Ministry now, got a job as an Auror, which was fucked up in a weird sort of way. But Clint… he hadn’t wanted to leave his Mum. She was… if they left her then she was all alone with their Dad and that wasn’t right. He and Barney had had a screaming row about it and Barney had stormed off to the pub and Clint had been alone when their parents had returned and he’d been angry and…

A hand touched his shoulder and Clint almost fell off the roof in shock.

“What the fuck?” he asked, twisting round to see Bucky Barnes looking down at him from a broomstick. Of course, the one thing that could make his day worse: Bucky Barnes was going to see him crying and drunk and broken. Clint scrubbed the tears from his eyes, and there was a rumble that he thought was far off thunder for a second, but as he looked up, he realised that it was Bucky speaking to him.

“-you heard me,” he managed to catch, focusing on the way Bucky’s lips shaped the words.

“I…” Clint started, but he couldn’t work out what to say. How was he going to be any good at all if he couldn’t hear what anyone said? Despite being a Ravenclaw, he was only an average student at the best of times. He’d never worked out why the Sorting Hat thought he fit in with all the others. If he couldn’t hear what the teachers were saying, he’d fail. And it was OWLs year.

Bucky slipped off his broom and sat down next to him. Clint missed something else he said and just stared. It wasn’t that he didn’t know there was noise. He could hear something, but it was like listening to it through static, or through a wall. Everything was distorted. More like audio blurring, or something. Was there even a word for that?

Bucky must have sensed that whatever he said wasn’t getting through and he gestured to Clint’s arm in its sling, speaking again. Clint caught the word ‘feast’ and ‘worried’, but nothing else.

Clint just nodded, and Bucky reached out, hands more gentle than Clint had ever seen before. It was like Bucky was in a Care of Magical Creatures class, not dealing with the mess that was Clint Barton.

His hands removed Clint’s arm from the sling in careful movements and he frowned down at it.

Dad hadn’t let them go to St Mungos, no matter how much his Mum had pleaded, he’d insisted that his magic was good enough for his own good for nothing son. Of course, Dad had never been good at charms in the first place. Clint knew it hadn’t worked, but he’d gone along with it, because what else could he do?

Bucky frowned and said something else.

“I know, it’s healing all wrong,” Clint agreed. “I should have gone to St Mungos. I get it. I’m sorry.”

Bucky blinked and looked up, like what Clint had said was wrong in some way. Then he frowned again and spoke, looking directly at Clint as he did so.

“I [xxx] able [xx] fix it,” he said, and Clint couldn’t look him in the eye, because he might have missed something, so he just kept staring at Bucky’s mouth. “I[xxxx]ling Steve [xxxx]. Would[xxx] to try?”

Clint nodded again. Whatever Bucky did couldn’t exactly make it worse, and Steve Rogers was still alive at least, and looking healthier and bigger than ever this year, from what he’d seen.

Bucky took out his wand and performed a complicated series of flicks and twists, muttering something under his breath that Clint would probably have known if he’d paid more attention in Charms lessons. Then there was a sudden burning shooting through his arm, building and building so hot that Clint gasped, jerking his arm away, but Bucky held it still tapping against the meat of his arm once, twice, thrice with his wand.

The pain increased again and then, like a wave cresting over a beach, it crashed down, ebbing away. All the pain. Even the aching that had been there since it had happened. Clint looked down at his arm, moving it cautiously. It moved easily and painlessly. Clint beamed up at Bucky who grinned right back.

“You’re a genius,” Clint said, the fog swallowing his words even inside his own head. “Thank you!” He stared down at his arm and moved it again. It seemed like such a simple thing, but there it was.

Bucky’s hand tapped his shoulder and Clint looked up to find Bucky pointing at his own ear. Clint blanched.

“Uh, no need,” Clint said, waving a hand. “It’ll be fine. I just… drank too much.” He lifted the firewhiskey bottle.

Bucky glared at him.

“[xxx] hospital [xxx] some[xxx].”

Clint cringed and shrugged, lifting the firewhiskey back to his mouth, but Bucky grabbed it from his hand and stood up.

“I[xx] with you,” Bucky said, holding out a hand.

Clint stared up at him, his stomach twisted into knots, then, before he could back out, he nodded and reached up his newly fixed arm to take Bucky’s hand. It was warm under his and it grasped back, firm and solid, like an anchor point.

“Thanks,” Clint said, avoiding eye contact.

Bucky gently hooked fingers under his chin and moved it so he could see Bucky’s mouth.

“[xx] day you[xxx] return the favour.”

Clint nodded. He didn’t know how he’d manage that, but if he ever had a chance, he swore to himself he would.

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on tumblr: https://mariana-oconnor.tumblr.com/post/185927696466/a-debt-to-be-paid


End file.
